Grass
by kangeiko
Summary: After "The Gift" Giles goes in search of an old friend. What does he find?


GRASS

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. That includes the Buffyverse.

SUMMARY: After "The Gift" Giles goes in search of an old friend. What does he find?

RATING: R, probably.

ARCHIVE: List archives ok, everywhere else ask first, please.

FEEDBACK: Sock it to me.

NOTES: Title comes from a poem. It will be included at the end of the fic b/c of spoilers. Also, without a specific date for "The Gift", I'm sticking it in late April. If I'm wrong, well, ignore that for the time being. Some places mentioned in this fic are real; some are not. I live in the UK and have never been to the USA. I leave you to make up your mind which is which.

DEDICATION: For all those lovely people who called today to wish me a happy birthday. Many thanks. ;-)

--May 9th, 2001--

"No. No, that's not him."

A hesitating hand landed on Giles's shoulder and squeezed hard. "I'm sorry. I really am. But it is him."

Giles's vision blurred. He sank to his knees and shook his head desperately. "No. No. No, it can't be. It can't be."

--April 30th, 2001--

Beltane.

The night of the year where the entire city goes mad.

Three children of indeterminate gender and age raced past Giles, almost bowling him over. Their faces were painted blue; they wore black cloaks and, from what Giles had unfortunately seen, precious little underneath them, except perhaps more blue paint.

"Are you coming to the party?" One of them lagged back, cloak falling partially open in a clear invitation.

Giles shook his head. "I'm not here for the party."

Another one of the children slinked back to embrace his (her?) companion, slender fingers playing across the partially revealed chest. Giles thought that he could detect the slight curve of breasts, but he really couldn't be sure.

Beside him, torches burned bright, providing the only real light for the procession of revellers. Each torch-bearer was normally accompanied by at least a dozen similarly-painted children, all determined to make this a night no one would be able to remember.

The second child smiled, and her – it had to be a her; no man could dimple like that – expression turned into something unspeakably lewd. "Are ye here to fuck, then?"

Startled, "no. I'm not here for that either. I'm just here for the city."

"Right!" The first child scoffed, then stepped closer.

Yes, Giles decided, they were both female.

"Are ye sure we can't, um, change your mind? I know just the lass if we're not to your liking." And she batted her eyes.

For the first time in a long while, Giles fought back a genuine smile. "No. I'm sure. My interests don't run that way, I'm afraid."

The two girls seemed disappointed. "Oh. Well. There's some nice lads there too, if you decide to join us later on." They glanced at each other. In the distance, their former companion turned back and yelled at them. They looked back at Giles. "Nice seeing you. We've gotta go… but enjoy the rest of the night!"

They made their way back to the rest of the procession that snaked its way up the side of the mountain. This one night of the year the entire city procured paints, torches, lighters, glowing rods and other assorted dubious items and marched all the way up a dormant volcano, where they proceeded to have parties, jugglers, fire dances and mad, wild sex on the side of a mountain to celebrate the coming spring. The morning after usually found most revellers sound asleep and oblivious to the cold virus and perhaps even first signs of pneumonia that usually accompanied such parties when it was obviously still too cold to be called anything other the middle of winter. Yet people persisted in this – an insane party, usually a beautiful blank for most people the next day. A celebration of all that was good and born and flowering. And it was happening tonight.

Not for the first time, Giles wished that he had picked a different night to arrive in Edinburgh.

He finally made it to his hotel one hour – and thirteen propositions – later, thoroughly exhausted and not a little sick to be grabbed and kissed by random strangers smudging blue paint and children's softness onto his face. He didn't need this. He had come to Edinburgh because he needed to escape the world, and because he was looking for someone. London was London – it was home, it was the cradle, it was the place people ran to when they needed to disappear. But there was no way he was returning there now, not with three hundred Watchers all eagerly awaiting his arrival. Not when there were thousands of questions to answer, millions of explanations, comments, notes, thoughts…

In the end, he knew why the Watcher Diaries just stopped. His own journal was left abandoned in the bottom of his suitcase. He took it with him everywhere he went, naturally. He knew that he could never leave it to be found by the Council, to be pored over by dry academics, his every choice questioned and found lacking. He didn't need that. He could do that himself. He knew that he could never leave it behind to be filed away in some forgotten room, locked away from the eyes of man, never to be seen in a hundred years. And he also knew that he could never write in it again.

What was there to write?

He couldn't exactly say how his Slayer could learn from this experience and grow. He couldn't say how the injury would remind her that she wasn't infallible, that she wasn't invinsible or immortal. He couldn't say that it was amazing how much Spike had progressed because of his love for a Slayer, and that maybe they should look into rehabilitation, as peculiar as that sounded. He couldn't talk about Glory's last stand, and how, through sheer determination, they had stopped her.

Because they had not.

Instead, he could talk about the look on Willow's face as she saw the crumpled body of her best friend. He could describe the way the blood ran down freely on Spike's face, pooling in his hands as he wept and didn't even drink. He could comment on Xander's horrified look, on Anya's injuries and self-sacrifice. He could talk about Dawn surviving… and watching her sister die in slow motion. He could talk about all that, and more.

What he could not find in himself to discuss, though, was his own reaction. His own thoughts. His feelings on the matter. This was simply because he didn't have any.

It had taken Giles precisely three days to realise that he really didn't want to stay in Sunnydale any longer.

"I'm leaving," he had told Willow. "Do tell the others for me."

She had nodded wordlessly, and returned to Tara's embrace. The next morning, he had boarded a plane and left. And he had convinced himself that he could stop himself from thinking about this indefinitely. He could deny death, even when faced with the evidence – a child, bleeding on the ground. Golden hair, tarnished with rust. And all his dreams, torn…

Giles carefully unpacked the sole photograph he had taken with him and placed it on the bedside table. Buffy, Willow, Xander, Cordelia and Oz stared back, silly grins on their faces, clad in maroon colours with tassels dangling off to the side. Graduation day. The one picture he had of them from that special day – that spectacular finale. The extravaganza to end all extravaganzas, where the evil was defeated, the wounded and dead counted and mourned for, and the heroes continued with their lives, relatively unscathed except emotionally. And that didn't count, because you could heal from that. Right?

You couldn't heal from being dead. That was an end-all of itself, really. Buffy would never be coming back. She would never have any more pictures taken, except maybe for the coroner's report. But Giles could heal, right? He could forget.

After a second's thought, Giles tipped the picture over, turning it face down.

Of course he could. Given enough time, people could forget anything. Hadn't he already proved that? He had forgotten his own life. How much more would it take for him to forget Buffy's?

A flare lit up his window and fizzled out. Giles leaned out of the window and looked down at the dancing revellers. Coming here had been a mistake. He had no place at this celebration of life.

--May 1st, 2001--

"Have you seen him recently?" The photograph was decades old, tattered and torn from having spent its life in various unsavoury places.

A hung-over young woman blinked blearily at it and tried to focus. "Um. Er. No. The photo's a bit old. Haven't you got anything more recent?"

No. And he was ashamed to admit it. This was all he had to leave on his bedside table, and it was the photo of another forgotten life. He shook his head and returned the photo to his wallet, where a graduation picture had been carefully folded and put away. A man's family, someone might think. But who could have this happy a life?

The woman shrugged helplessly at him. "I'm sorry, Mr Giles. I don't recognise him at all. Is he a vampire? Because the London branch would be better in that area."

This, too, prompted a headshake. "No. I don't want to go down to London right now Nancy. I just… I can't deal with the Council right now. And he's not a vampire. He's a magician. A warlock, in the true sense of the word."

"Black magick? Hmmm. Try Jekyll and Hyde. They've been there since forever, and if this one's into bad magicks, he'd have stopped in there at some point." She returned her gaze to her flickering computer screen. "I'm sorry, I can't help you anymore."

Giles took that as his dismissal and left. The Jekyll and Hyde… where was that again? Somewhere North, he seemed to remember. Asking for directions was useless, because the entire city slept in the wake of Beltane. Not that he could blame them… well, actually, he could. And he did. It was easier than blaming himself.

"'Scuse me. The Jekyll and Hyde?"

A youth with every visible part of his body either tattooed or pierced stared back at him. "I'm not sure, sir," he returned politely, and Giles fought the urge to blink in disbelief. "I believe it is near Rose Street – for that, you have to walk north from here until Princes Street, and then it's your third on the right and then first on the left. It actually runs parallel to Princes Street itself. The Jekyll and Hyde should be somewhere off that. Good evening," and the youth went on his way.

Giles shook his head and kept on walking.

Half an hour later, past innumerable old buildings and scaffolding bars, he crossed North Bridge and found himself on Princes Street. He braved the crossing to the far side, almost uncaring of the traffic screaming to a halt as he walked through a red light. Yet no one yelled, or even complained. Every one was still sleepy, still tired. Still entirely off-guard and open.

He was starting to hate this place.

An hour later he found himself falling through a wall at the Jekyll and Hyde and ending up in the men's room for the meeting the bar steward had arranged. He said nothing about that particular tourist attraction, said nothing to the tired face staring back at him from the mirror or to the mouthing of secret words by the little girl who followed him in.

"He'll see you now," she said, and withdrew in good order.

An hour after that, Giles left the pub.

--May 2nd, 2001--

"His name is Ethan Rayne. He may have used a pseudonym."

A ginger-haired youth – why were they all suddenly youths? Had the entire world de-aged? – stared doubtfully at the picture and then glanced back at his computer. He shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir, but he's not on our system. Do you know what pseudonym he might have travelled under?"

No. And no again.

Ethan Rayne had not left the USA.

After a moment's thought, Giles booked himself a flight back to the country he had come to tentatively call 'home'.

--May 4th, 2001--

It was entirely too hot again.

Edinburgh had been briskly cold, end-of-winter Atlantic winds blasting through the small city nestled in the foot of a mountain that did little to protect it. The weather, at least, had matched Giles' mood, if not the inhabitants. Going somewhere to be alone – well, almost – did not mean that you expected to be accosted on the street. Next time, he was going to go just that little bit further and go to St Andrews. He was entirely sure that three weeks later he'd be hurling himself off the cliffs from sheer boredom.

As it was, he was back 'home'. 'Home' was Thanksgiving and training sessions and road trips and real home-made apple pie you ate with cream, not custard. It was softened accents, sandy beaches, blinding hot sun and countless nameless bodies clad in practically nothing, jostling against each other needlessly. 'Home' had started to become home - the place you ran to, the place you escaped to when you needed to think, the place your friends and family were – until its very foundations had been taken away. And Giles had found no reason to remain there.

Funny, then, that he should find a reason to return.

--May 5th, 2001—

His contacts came through, finally. Two days of waiting and Giles was going out of his mind. Two days of waiting, and he hadn't even called anyone in Sunnydale to say that he was back. Because he wasn't; not really.

Being 'back' meant going to the funeral. It meant dealing with the paperwork, consoling the remaining children – and weren't they just children after all, dragged into a fight they were ill equipped to deal with? – and doing all those little things he had left the country to escape. And he wasn't back. Not for Buffy. Not yet. There were some things he couldn't deal with yet.

Right now, this was about taking care of business – about tying up loose ends. About playing the knight in white armour and charging to the rescue before it was too late. Buffy was dead.

But Ethan could still be saved.

Giles slid behind the wheel of the car and started up the motor. There would be a long drive ahead of him. At least, this time, he knew where he was headed.

--May 6th, 2001--

"Just the gas?"

"Uh. No. Can I have a packet of Marlboro as well."

Giles paid for his purchases and returned to his car, lighting up a fag gratefully and sighing as the nicotine hit his system. He didn't smoke anymore, right? It was unhealthy, it polluted your body, and there were easier ways to punish yourself. Right. He took another drag of his cigarette and fished out the directions he had locked in the glove compartment. Three more hours on the motorway, it looked like, and then turning off on roads that did not exist on any maps and trying to find a building that was officially denied physicality.

"You're looking for what?" And again, that bark of incredulous laughter. Everyone knew that place didn't exist. Everyone knew it was a fairytale little children believed – an urban legend, almost. "Yeah, it's right past Area 51." Another smirk, until Giles had wanted to rearrange their face.

Of course, he had not. Of course. That was not allowed. Ripper could do that, but Rupert Giles could not. And he wasn't Ripper. Not anymore.

He took another drag of his cigarette and reached for the can of beer by his feet. No one had said that the rescuer had to be prompt.

-- May 7th, 2001--

Three in the morning. The moon was out and his lights were working, so he could drive. Funny how you could do without breaks if you really felt the need.

The picture of a smirking young man stared at him from the dashboard. Damn you, Ethan, Giles thought. Finally, here was something he could do right.

-- May 8th, 2001 --

The car was beginning to complain and contemplate simply giving up. Giles coaxed it the remaining few miles, unsure of the feelings that suddenly registered when he saw the officially non-existent military complex up ahead. Middle of the desert, right. Nowhere else to put secret bases.

The guard at the gate had looked at him peculiarly. Probably no one ended up out here except by sincere accident. "Are you lost, sir?"

"No," Giles replied and killed the engine. "Not unless this isn't a secret government base run by the remains of the Initiative."

The gun suddenly pointing at him was remarkably steady. "Come with me, sir."

Giles thought this over. "No."

The guard was remarkably easy to disarm, considering that he had a gun and several hidden weapons on his person. Of course, once Giles had cast the sleep spell, there really wasn't much of a struggle being put up. The cameras stopped working; everywhere he went, guards simply slipped into a deep sleep. They would sleep for two days.

Unfortunately, this left him with the unenviable task of trying to navigate the base. He wasn't sure why he was so directionless all of a sudden – usually he could find whoever he was looking for, as if by instinct. When it came to Buffy or possibly to Ethan, that instinct was doubled, tripled, increased a hundred fold with the need to seek out and destroy the danger to them.

At least, it had been. Maybe it had all been Buffy. Maybe she was the one with the beacons and the signals and the power to make people find her.

Or maybe Ethan just didn't want to be found.

In one of the rooms, a medic crouched against the far wall, convinced that the apocalypse had arrived in the form of a simple man.

Ethan, Ethan. Why didn't you get out of here on your own?

--May 9th, 2001--

"I don't like repeating myself," Giles said calmly over the medic's whimpers. "I don't like repeating myself, and I don't like breaking bones. They sound like dry sticks – it's not pleasant. But I've done a lot of unpleasant things in my time. It won't be a problem to do some more."

The medic whimpered some more.

Funny how, although he abhorred violence now, how he hated to see a fellow human being in pain, he could do this with no reaction from himself. How he could question – nay, torture – someone for information, and not feel the familiar pangs of guilt. It was as if his body knew that he was already irrevocably damned and that nothing he did now could possibly equal what he had done before. Cold blooded murder to protect a child he had let die anyway. Was it any wonder he still didn't want to deal with that?

"Tell me where Ethan Rayne is."

Strange, also, that this small man resisted so strongly for no reason that he could discern. "I'm sorry," he babbled, pressing his face against the wall. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry."

His hair was dark blond against the murky grey of the wall.

Giles felt something in him break open. No. No. What had they done to Ethan to be so frightened of his reaction?

His fingers gentled on the sun-spun hair, stroking it softly in remembrance of a familiar caress over cold dead flesh. "It's okay," he said in another man's voice to a child now gone. "It's ok. I won't hurt you."

The young medic had managed to regain most of his composure by the time they arrived at a set of locked doors deep underground.

"He's in here," he said, unseeing of the sudden hope in the other man's eyes. That he was this close…

The grey doors opened, and Giles was alive again. He could do this. He could live. He could atone for not saving a life by saving another. He could collect Ethan and nurse him back to health from whatever had been done to him here while Giles slept safe in his own bed. He could take Ethan back to Sunnydale, back to the funeral and to the children standing around an empty hole in the ground where a box of remains was being lowered in. And, with the rest of the living, he too would be finally able to walk wearily away.

He strode in.

And stopped.

"Ethan—"

And there Ethan was. But it wasn't Ethan. It couldn't be. Ethan had never been that thin or that scared. He had never been that helpless.

And he was alive.

He had to be.

The box of remains hit the side of the grave and tipped itself open, spilling gold hair onto the dark earth. Bright dead eyes stared up at him accusingly.

"It's an ODC – an Oxygen Deprivation Chamber," the medic explained slowly, regret and guilt evident in his voice. "It's used on specimens of mixed blood when the human face is the primary one. Demons –" he started forward and touched the glass, "can live on less oxygen than humans. So they are locked in here and slowly, bit by bit, the oxygen is sucked out. Eventually their 'demon' side emerges."

But – "Ethan is human," Giles whispered, unable to look away.

The medic winced. "Yes. We know that now." He turned to face Giles. "I'm sorry, sir. I really am. This was not my doing." His face was crumpled with guilt.

In a sealed environment things are perfectly preserved. But it didn't matter, because that wasn't Ethan. It couldn't be.

Giles's breath caught somewhere south of his breastbone and he fought to inhale, taking large shaky gulps. This was it, he thought numbly. This was the one thing he hadn't thought. The one possibility he hadn't considered. Could he really fail this badly a second time?

He stared blankly at the corpse in front of him. It wasn't Ethan. It couldn't be. It couldn't be. "No. No, that's not him."

A hesitating hand landed on Giles's shoulder and squeezed hard. "I'm sorry. I really am. But it is him."

Giles's vision blurred. He sank to his knees and shook his head desperately. "No. No. No, it can't be. It can't be."

It was Ethan. Eyes wide, frightened, lips that didn't scream and fists still resting on the glass. It had to be Ethan. Because only one person except Ethan could look straight through him like that… and she was already dead.

--May 10th, 2001—

Giles left the facility a little after midnight, carrying his precious burden wrapped in his leather coat. The medic had had a tough time persuading him to take the time to wrap Ethan up, because all Giles had wanted in those few moments was to grab him and carry him out of that facility, out of that whole Goddamned state – out of the USA itself, if he could help it – away from the stink of death and of breaths never taken.

The air felt cool against his coat-less back, the wind rustling the leaves of the lone tree he approached. So much air out here, and all of it so useless to the man who lay cold and unmoving in his arms.

He hadn't even heard him cry out.

Wasn't that some sort of crime? After everything they had been to one another, after how close they had been – after Giles had traversed the globe looking for him – all it would have taken for him to find Ethan would have been for him to be awake on the night Ethan screamed his last breath in that chamber. Instead, Giles had been sleeping. He had slept through the whole thing.

His grip on Ethan's body tightened.

He had thought that his carelessness – or was that callousness? – had begun with Ben's death. Or maybe it was with Joyce's. He knew better, now. It was the mouthing of a name that could not be screamed, a desperate call that went unanswered and the hope of a rescue from a lover that was not listening. Had never listened. And now, this was the result.

It was him, Giles realised with blinding clarity. It was him, not Buffy. He had wondered why such terrible things happened to such an innocent girl, and had blamed the unfairness of the universe. Had blamed her Calling, the Council, even Buffy herself. Angel and Angelus, Dawn, Joyce, all those other nameless heartaches… he had always thought that she was the focal point.

Now, with another dead body in his arms, he knew he had been wrong. It wasn't Buffy. It had never been Buffy. Buffy had not been the reason for Angelus, for Joyce, for Dawn, for Randall or for Ethan. It had been Giles.

This was one feeling he could claim entirely for himself.

The moon peeked out from behind the clouds and granted him his first good look at Ethan outside the facility.

It was still Ethan. No useless wishes, no blame, no regrets could change that.

There was nothing left to do then, except lay the body down carefully and kneel on the ground, his hands buried in the dirt. Slowly, handful by handful, he clawed his way through sandy grass and earth and dirt and the creatures living within. There were no spades or shovels here. It did not matter.

This grave he had to dig with his bare hands.

fin

NOTE: The title of this fic comes from the following poem, excerpted below.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work --

I am the grass; I cover all.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) "Grass"


End file.
